Then I'll Sign
by skystar234
Summary: Before Hazel signs they Accords, she thinks everyone has a right to know what kind of man Thaddeus Ross is. She can't justify giving him control over her power, and she wants the others to understand before they put their names down.


**Author's Note:** Firstly, I would like to apologize to the people who are still reading my stuff. I get emails about you guys following and favoriting me, and I love you for it, and feel bad because I haven't put out anything new in awhile. It's been a rough time for me - last year I was in my dream internship, but they couldn't hire me at the end of it and I've been back home trying to find a job, and it hasn't been going well for me. Because of that, my motivation to write has taken a major hit (and it's not just this site either, my blog has also been losing a lot of steam), and I just haven't kept up with anything. I haven't even been coming up with more ideas, which was something that I usually did in-between putting out chapters. I am putting up this one-shot because I recently had a Marvel Phase Three marathon with my friends, and every time I watch _Civil War_ I think of how stupid it is that ROSS of all people is dictating how the Accords are going to work. Now this is not my best one-shot, I know that, but just writing down this tiny little thing helped get some of the cobwebs out of my head and hopefully I can get back to blog posts and FanFiction chapters. I really appreciate everyone still following me, and I will try to be worthy of that trust. Also I apologize if this is hard to read - for some reason it won't let me upload the document I typed and I had to copy-n-paste.

 ** _Then I'll Sign_**

"New York. Washington D.C. Sokovia. Lagos."

Hazel was done listening before Steve told Secretary Ross to stop talking. It shouldn't have been a surprise - the Secretary of State had always been very vocal about his feelings towards the Avengers. It didn't really help that their mere existence protected the one man he hated more than anyone else in the world. And now, thanks to Ultron (through Tony) and Lagos, he finally had the ammunition he needed.

The Avengers retired to their living room to argue over the Sokovia Accords. Well, Sam and Rhodey argued, everyone else was busy processing. Steve was actually trying to read the agreement, which Hazel had to admire - she never read the terms and conditions on anything.

Hazel took a moment to look at her fellow Avengers, trying to gauge their reactions. She hadn't been an Avenger as long as most of them, but she thought she knew how this would go. Rhodes and Vision were both avid rule-followers, and unlike Steve and Sam, their trust in governmental authority had never wavered. Sam and Steve were soldiers, but their trust had been broken a long time ago. Tony was so wracked with guilt that he would do anything to fix it. Wanda was still young and afraid of her own power… she could go either way. Natasha would be pragmatic until her conscious started gnawing away at her.

No, Hazel's superpower was not seeing the future. She just knew her teammates pretty well.

Hazel was quiet during Sam and Rhodey's argument; during Tony's story about the dead boy in Sokovia; through Vision's equation explanation. She lit a spark on her fingers and stared at it, bouncing the flame from knuckle to knuckle, almost seeing the team fall apart in the fire.

Unlike several of the Avengers, Hazel had her powers for most of her life. She'd accidentally set the backyard on fire when she was about seven, and ever since she'd been very cautious with whom she showed her powers to - her first grade friend at the time had been in the backyard with her and accused her of being a demon from hell. She hadn't joined the Avengers for that reason until after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. With Hydra out in the open, stopping a few petty shoplifters and scaring perverts in bars seemed meaningless when she could actually be doing some good. She'd 'auditioned' by scaling up the side of Avengers Tower in a shadow and lighting a fire under Tony's plate of burritos. He'd screamed like a little girl until he realized she had perfectly reheated his lunch for him. Eventually she became a 'big gun', or a way to do a lot of work without needing to call in The Hulk unnecessarily.

She couldn't avoid a choice forever though.

Natasha noticed first. "Hazel, you haven't said anything."

"Yeah Miss Hades, what's your take?" Toy prompted, folding his arms. "You know, between the people who are obviously right and the idiots."

Sam snorted by Steve was watching her seriously.

Hazel slowly let the fire die out on her fingertips. "Tony, who's name is on the bottom of those Accords?"

Clearly no one expected the question. Tony shrugged. "Uh, that matters…why?"

Steve flipped to the final page. "Secretary Ross, I think. Seemed like he was in charge."

Hazel nodded slowly. "Then no. I'm not signing."

"BOOM!" Sam said, throwing his hands up in the air.

Tony and Rhodey both groaned. "Come on, Hazel, you can't seriously just say no because of Ross. He's the Secretary of State! It's not like it's a shady, backdoor deal here! He's -"

"Rhodey, if you tell me that he has that Congressional Medal thing again, I will light your pants on fire." Hazel said calmly. She stood up and walked to the window, staring at the giant A on the side of the building. She had a feeling it would be the last time she really saw the insignia.

Natasha's eyes followed her as Sam and Rhodey started bickering again. "You have to have a reason, Hazel." She said. "This is a big deal. You can't just say no."

Hazel turned back to the group. "I don't entirely disagree with you, Tony." She said honestly. "We as Avengers should be held to a higher standard, especially if we're crossing country borders. Because of our power, we need to make sure that what we do doesn't cause as much damage as what we're there to fix, and sometimes we are too close to the matter at hand to make a good decision."

"That being said," Hazel's tone hardened when Tony started to look smug, "If we're going to be monitored, it should be by someone trustworthy, who has our interests in mind as well as the priorities of the countries we help. Thaddeus Ross is a person I will never surrender my power or my control to."

Rhodey threw his hands in the air. "I'll say it again! He is the SECRETARY OF STATE. He's fourth in line to run the country! He was a lieutenant general in the army! Compared to some of us, his record is spotless!"

Hazel actually laughed out loud at that. Sure, Rhodey looked offended, but she couldn't hold it in.

"Spotless record." She said. "I guess when you make the record, that's probably true." She turned to face the whole group, arms crossed across her chest. Let me ask you - did you notice that, in his list of all the terrible things the Avengers have caused, that one's missing?"

That certainly got everyone to shut up. Granted, there were lots of events where the Avengers caused a bit of destruction - came with the territory - but which one could Ross have left out?

Hazel pulled out her Stark phone, scrolled through her files, and threw up a video like Tony had. A familiar, angry, green figure roared and dashed across the screen to grapple with an equally large gray figure.

Hazel watched everyone's faces impassively. "Sure, it's not keeping all New York City from getting nuked, but still, breaking Harlem was pretty bad. You guys remember this? It was in the files you got when you joined the team." Based on their faces, they did not remember. "Before Bruce went to India, he fought a Hulk-like guy named Abomination, aka Emil Blonsky, in Harlem. And why did he do that?" Hazel pulled down the video and threw up a picture of Ross and a file.

"When Hydra fell and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files went viral, plenty of other government agencies had their files leaked too. Things Fury kept an eye on and such. When I joined up, I dug around in them a little - wanted to know more about what I was stepping into - and it turns out that Fury had a lot of information on the "Harlem Incident"." Hazel set the phone down on the table, on top of the Accords booklet, and let it scroll while she talked.

"I'm guessing most of you know the basics of the Hulk - Bruce was trying to replicate the Super Soldier Serum and overemphasized a little on the gamma radiation, Hulked out, and ran away. But these files clarified a few things: for one, Ross was in charge of that project, and for another, he never actually told Bruce what they were attempting to do. Bruce was under the impression that he was working on radiation resistance. Then Ross decided to hunt down Bruce, both because of his guilt over his daughter's injury and because if the Hulk became public knowledge, he would have to take responsibility for being in charge of a project that was never fully approved.

"Then, if we ignore the men that were put in danger and gravely injured when Ross sent them after Bruce in South American - where he hadn't actually hurt anyone, mind you - he listened to a soldier who wanted to fight the Hulk _mano é mano_ and approved injecting him with the same crap that caused this whole mess in the first place." Hazel paused and paused the scrolling page. "Correction - twice. Blonsky got Ross' permission to be injected TWICE. He only did it unofficially once."

"So when the Hulk took on Blonsky in Harlem, destroying a bunch of property and endangering countless lives, it's only because Ross wanted the Hulk _so badly_ that he gave a soldier permission to become a bastard Hulk that, theoretically, he could control. And when he couldn't, he blamed the entire thing on the guy who was basically offering to clean up his mess." Hazel finished.

The room was pretty quiet after she finished. Even Natasha (who was in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files constantly) and Tony (Bruce's self-proclaimed best friend), seemed shell-shocked.

Hazel shut the pages down, picked up her phone, and tossed the pen Tony had put down in front of everyone back at him. "We need to be put in check." She agreed with his earlier statement. "But not like this. Not by this man." She walked towards the door, pausing in the frame. "Put someone actually trustworthy in charge. Then I'll sign."

 **CA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CWCA:CW**

Though the arguments started up again after Hazel left the room, they were quieter. The people who still were in favor of signing the Accords were trying to figure out if it was possible to remove Ross from the committee in charge of the Accords, or if it was even necessary (after all, Bruce was M.I.A. now). In the middle of it all, Steve got a text about the passing of Peggy Carter. He excused himself quietly to take a moment in the stairwell, to wraps head around everything that was happening.

When he looked up at the window, he saw Hazel walking across the lawn, a bag over her shoulder. When she reached the tree line, she vanished into the shadows. Steve jogged to her room to find all of her personal items had vanished except for her phone, sitting on the bedside table. There was no note, no goodbye, no explanation. Really, Steve didn't need one. Hazel had understood how the Avengers would all feel and she wasn't going to stay around and watch it fall apart. She said her piece, just in case, but she knew that ultimately the team would fracture over the Accords.

Steve hoped that she was wrong.


End file.
